The Drowning Director: A Lifeline for Those at the Top of Business Who May Feel Out of Their Depth in a Sea of Technology Hype and Unfulfilled Promise [Hardcover]

"I think that there's a real need for a book with this kind of analysis and these types of messages. It has homed in on the key issues and explained them well" Sir George Cox Director General - the Institute of Directors 1999-2004

We live in a world of ever more dramatic change in Business and Government, and in our private lives, with a major stimulus for much of that change being the huge advances in the application of new information technologies. However, progress has been strewn with disasters as well as successes, and change management has certainly not kept pace with technology innovation. Management inadequacies continue to incur escalating costs, and this situation cannot be tolerated. Some business and political leaders have transformed their fortunes through their ability to recognise the changing forces that they are facing, and to re-establish themselves and their organisation as a new major player in a changing world. An ability to identify the underlying trends, capitalise early on new opportunities and deal proactively with new risks, differentiates the winners from the losers.To win in today's business environment, the management culture and processes need to be directed at unifying business and new technology expertise, such that many of today's impediments to progress can be laid to rest. Such change will open up new horizons of opportunity that are based on business reality, rather than on technology innovation that is insufficiently close to that reality. Developing a vision for our place in the new world, instead of overly focusing on the old, is clearly the only sensible way forward. This book is intended to assist that process. It is the culmination of fifty long years of the pain and the pleasure of bringing about change within Business and the Public Sector. It distils a lifetime of lessons learned, offers many insights into what is going on in the business of change, and provides ideas for the future that break the mould of the past.

Geoff Codd's primary focus has been on process and cultural issues in the context of business change, rather than on the technology drivers of change. His analysis and recommendations are specifically directed at empowering busy business directors in a subject about which many feel ill informed. It was just over 50 years ago that Geoff started his involvement with information technology at Rolls-Royce Aero Engine Division in Derby in the UK. Since that very early beginning he has faced almost every conceivable challenge in business IT exploitation, within a wide range of business cultures and management styles in both the Private and the Public Sectors, latterly at board level. This broad range of experience, in a variety of roles, has provided Geoff Codd with a unique insight into the many major inadequacies that arise in business IT exploitation, both from a business management as well as a technology perspective. Many of those inadequacies derive from traditional practices that are still the accepted norm in business today.